Advent Fantasy
by Rukia Siry
Summary: They've defeated Caius and halted Cocoonfall, saved the Planet and stopped Etro's plan. Still, as they pick up their lives from the ruins of the old, there may be a new threat rising. Her friends are all there to support her, but Lightning's not sure whether she wants to keep fighting, or if she even can. FFVII AU, nearly ensemble cast.


**A/N: It's not necessary, but it helps quite a bit to know what goes on in FFVII and Advent Children to make sense of this. It's also VERY spoiler-heavy for FFVII in general, so watch out. Nearly ensemble cast.**

"Hey, Hope! Hangin' in there?"

Hope's boyish tenor came through clearly if a little staticky, obviously surprised and pleased. _"Sazh! It's been a while."_

Sazh switched the PHS to his left hand and concentrated on loading the supplies into the helicopter. The lighter the better, though, if the Turks were to be believed.

And if he had the destination right. The Northern Crater? The place would be hard enough to approach from the air, given the thin air and unpredictable weather. It would almost be easier trekking there on foot.

"Got that right. Next time I see you, you better have shot up like a weed. The Planet knows Dajh has."

He heard Hope cough embarrassedly on the other end of the line – definitely still a kid – and change the subject. _"Urgh. How's he doing, by the way?"_

Sazh strapped down the emergency medical supplies. "Pretty great, actually. He's the reason why I called. Mind watching him for a bit?"

"_You know I don't. But why?"_

"I have a job securing some precious cargo up north. It'll take me out of the area for a few days, and Dajh can't stay at our place by himself. Sorry to just throw this on you, but Vanille and Fang aren't home much and… not sure Noel's got one."

"_Relax, old man! It's fine. Dajh can stay with me for as long as he needs to."_

"Hey, who you callin' old?" Sazh scolded, and Hope laughed on the other side of the line. He sounded cheerful, but Sazh picked up on something different. A trace of sadness?

Wait. There was something wrong with what he had said.

"Just you? Aren't you living with Lightning nowadays?"

A hesitation on the other side of the line. Then: _"Yeah."_

"How's the soldier holding up?"

"… _Fine. Things have been tough since Cocoonfall. It was hard for everyone to adjust, what with everything that's happened."_

_Everything_ meaning the disaster that leveled Eden and killed thousands of people. And for Lightning, the discovery that her identity and memories were nothing but lies.

Everything was one way to describe it.

It was also vague and carried a faintly nervous undertone. "Anything else, kid?"

Hope couldn't have seen Sazh's dubiously raised eyebrow, but he squirmed all the same.

"_Well…"_

Sazh waited.

"_She's – she's not really here anymore. Lightning hasn't been home for nearly two weeks."_

"Say _what_?"

_._

_._

_._

Hope ran a clinic.

There hadn't been much work available after the Sanctum collapsed and Cocoon fell. There were too many people trying to scrape together new lives for themselves from the ruins of Eden.

Once upon a time, it had been a paradise – Above Plate, at least. Now it was a wasteland of twisted steel and broken glass. Sector Seven had been crushed long before Caius summoned mythical Cocoon and crashed it into Pulse, but it almost didn't matter anymore. Not when you couldn't find the Sectors _or_ the Plate among the mountains of ruined lives and dusty rubble.

Everyone had lost something or someone in the fall of Cocoon, be it families or livelihoods or homes. There was no more work after the Sanctum collapsed, no more mako power for the citizens to glut themselves on, and when finding two square meals a day and a place to live was a challenge for the average citizen, it was near impossible to entertain notions of living even facsimiles of the lives they'd have prior to the Fall.

It could take years just to dig up everything that had been buried in the wreckage.

So Hope gave up his dreams of going to university, becoming a researcher. In hindsight, his former desire to join the Sanctum had been so hopelessly naïve. Now that he knew everything about what they had been doing to the Planet…

He just didn't know what he wanted to do instead.

It hadn't been anything special at first. It hadn't been _anything _at first, actually. He'd been babysitting Dajh and a couple of his friends for the afternoon (Marlene and Denzel, right?) for the afternoon when Marlene had tripped and gotten a nasty cut on some twisted piping. Hope had cleaned and bandaged it before sending both of the kids back to their homes, lamenting his lack of a Cure materia (he had lent his to Fang for a behemoth hunting expedition after her own broke).

Apparently he had done a decent job, because Marlene's father – one Barrett Wallace – showed up at his door a week later with a gashed calf in need of stitches.

Word got around. What Hope soon discovered was that in this post-apocalyptic era, there were too many injuries, too many people, and not enough doctors to tend to all of them.

In the meantime, a new settlement had risen over the ruins of Eden, but no one entertained the notion of naming it after the city.

Everyone just called it Edge.

Some had moved to Palumpolum, a small village that had rapidly industrialized into a commercial center with the inflow of displaced citizens from Eden. Others had opted for Bodhum. But Edge was where Hope opted to set up his hospital.

It was hard, at first. Hope and Vanille had been the designated medics when he traveled with Lightning and the others, and Vanille _had _taught him a lot about it. Their group trusted him, back then. But facing facts, he was fifteen and not that many adults trusted a boy to do an adult's work.

He just had had to prove them wrong.

It was busy, but satisfying. Vanille had squealed with delight when he told her and insisted on coming by periodically to help out, though she and Fang had volunteered to help out the efforts of the Pulse Restoration Committee and were away a lot of the time. Lightning had ended up staying with him when she wasn't out taking deliveries.

Two years had passed since then, and he was still worried about her.

Her abrupt disappearance – along with the recent epidemic – wasn't helping matters.

In a way he had never been busier, and yet had little to do at all. So many were ill. You could see the sick in the alleyways, stumbling down the street, looking out of streetside windows. But for this disease, there was no treatment and no cure. Why bother going to a doctor when you were going to die anyways?

The house phone rang, and he picked up, forcing a professional tone.

"Hello? This is Estheim Clinic and Farron Deliveries, may I ask who's calling?"

A familiar rough-edged voice answered, and Hope's eyes went wide in recognition.

"Huh? Yeah, I remember you!"

.

.

.

"Is this where Aunt Lightning lives?"

Dajh ran ahead of Hope into the church, whirling around to face him. Hope smiled a little.

"Yeah."

He glanced around, and his eyebrows drew together as he noted the chest of material and sleeping roll spread out on the flagstones beside the flowers. For a moment, he almost saw a girl with pink hair kneeling among them, patting water into the soil and humming a tune. A taller figure beside her, hand held over his eyes as he stared up at the roof of the church.

He shook it off.

Something else caught his attention. A grayish white cloth bandage thrown carelessly over the edge of the cooler fluttered in the wind, and a sick feeling began in the pit of his stomach.

Dajh had seen it too, and he ran over to it just as Hope hastily picked it up to prevent the boy from touching it. It _looked _liquid, but on closer inspection the gray felt more like cracked clay, like fluid dried stiff. Tiny clear blue rocks flecked the cloth.

Unmistakable.

Dajh peered at the bandage, and Hope saw the realization in the eight-year-old's face as well, saw his face fall and shoulders droop.

"Uncle Hope… does Lightning have the crystal stigma?"

"It would seem so," he murmured.

Dajh looked down. "That's why she left."

Hope turned the fabric over in his palm and grimaced as he saw the gray stain even through the thick fabric. He folded it into a square and tucked it into the pouch at his waist.

"Why didn't she… why didn't she tell us?"

Of course Lightning wouldn't say anything. She was so absorbed in her own failings, but none of it had ever been her fault, right? Caius had killed Serah. Snow had sacrificed himself to protect Lightning, but comatose from the strain of mako poisoning, she couldn't have done anything to prevent it.

The fault lay with the Sanctum government, and it was gone. But Lightning was still consumed in her own mistakes.

_It's okay to tell people, right? Didn't Vanille say that having people who understood and cared about you was important? Isn't that what a family's all about?_

Maybe that only worked for real families.

Dajh ran back over to where Hope stood. "Hope, what now?"

Hope forced a smile. "Now? We should probably go-"

Dajh's eyes widened, and ran over to stand in front of the church pews. "Do we have to leave? You said that Lightning needs us!"

He paused and then added in the authoritative tone of a child, "And Aunt Vanille says that you should always be there for your family. Lightning's like that for us."

"Dajh…" It felt odd, being lectured by a seven year old. What could he say? He wasn't even sure Lightning wanted to see them, what with running off and all.

But Hope walked over to put a hand on the boy's shoulder. "… Sure. Let's wait, okay? But when she comes back-"

"She'll get a lecture!"

Hope scratched the back of his head sheepishly. He didn't want to _think _of what Lightning would say if he tried to order her around. "Well, maybe not. But we'll definitely talk to her, okay? We can go get your dad and Fang and Vanille, too. Sound good?"

"All right!"

The church door opened, and Dajh turned, face lighting up as the figure appeared in the doorway. "Aunt-!"

"Dajh, wait!"

Hope lurched forward and barely caught the boy's shoulder in time, shoving the child behind him.

That wasn't Lightning at all.

A heavyset man stepped inside the church, black buckled clothing at odds with his bright silver hair.

He glanced around the church, a grimace of distaste on his face. "Oi. Where's Mother?"

"There's no one here!" Hope nearly shouted, acutely conscious of Dajh's position behind him. If anything happened, Hope couldn't promise that the stranger would escape with all his limbs attached.

The stranger swept a somewhat sullen glare over the rest of the church, curling his upper lip when he spotted the flowers. Hope tensed.

"Well. Okay." He backed up a pace, and he prayed for a second that he'd just leave. There was nothing here. Why bother staying around?

Hope should have known that fate never played fair.

The stranger's face cracked into a dark grin, and he held out crooked fingers. "Then play with me."

There was no getting out of this, was there?

"Dajh," he muttered. A light push, and the child scurried over to hide behind the fallen concrete, watching the ensuing fight with wide eyes.

And Hope had barely practiced his offensive magic in _years_.

_There is no can or can't. If I lose, Dajh gets hurt. I can only fight, and win._

_ Just do it! _

Hope drew his boomerang from his pouch and flicked his wrist, extending the weapon. "Bring it on!"

A haste spell warmed his body, and Hope moved. His hand glowed briefly, and he flung a fireball at the man. It made contact, and the explosion blasted the man off his feet. Hope followed it up with two more spears of ice, even as the man landed on his feet with ease and deflected both projectiles with a steel fist.

Hope wished for Alexander, but he had left the eidolith behind at the shop, not foreseeing a need for it. No one summoned eidolons lightly.

He was glad he hadn't forgotten his other weapon, at least.

The boomerang, pulsing with magical energy, knocked the stranger off balance even as it came soaring back to Hope's hand. But the man didn't seem to be at all fazed. An experienced fighter, then.

He should have practiced more. The months had passed with only sporadic training sessions, his last one over three weeks ago. He had been far too busy with his work and other chores to consider anything more stable.

The stranger huffed, and his form blurred. In under a second he was in front of Hope, the steel fist in front of Hope's face.

No, not just a fist.

Hope barely had time to cross his arms over his face – he had already cast Protect, thankfully – before the spikes on the contraption shot forward, barely slowed by the barrier. The points dug into his arm with enough force to bruise. An electric shock pulsed through Hope, knocking him back. He hit the ground and rolled to a standing position, wincing as he tested the tingling numbness in his arm. It made it hard to close his fingers.

No time to stop. Two could play at that game.

A potent Thunder crackled through the chamber, concentrated in a swirling tornado with the stranger as its eye. But Hope barely blinked before the man beat through it, charging at Hope with all the finesse of a bull.

A very fast, electrically charged bull.

Hope leaped to the side, but the man caught him by the arm and _threw _him at the wall.

Hope twisted in midair, felt a startling sense of vertigo as the world spun, and activated the gravity unit just as he hit the wall feet-first at a ninety-degree angle, knees bending to take the impact.

The wind gusted up every petal of the roses that grew in the church.

_My turn_.

Regardless of how long might have passed since he last fought seriously, Hope was still a force to be reckoned with.

He held out a hand, and a close-range Fire spell lanced the stranger in the face, sending him flying back across the pews. A swirl of a rising Aeroga trapped the man in the air for a brief moment until he summoned a Thundara that knocked him back into a line of church pews.

The man didn't get up again.

Hope relaxed, and he saw Dajh running towards him. "Hope, that was cool! You should be a superhero!"

He laughed, partly amused and mostly relieved, and was about to shoo them both out of there when –

A PHS started ringing.

The upbeat tune echoed throughout the church, the same eight beats looping over and over. Both Hope and Dajh's heads turned, instinctively searching for the sound.

It wasn't Hope's PHS. It wasn't Dajh's cheaper version, which Sazh had purchased so that he could keep track of his son at all times.

The pews moved, and the man Hope had just defeated effortlessly pushed himself back up, rubbing the back of his neck with an irritated sound. He took a PHS from his belt and flipped it open, effectively silencing the noise.

Hope and Dajh stood frozen.

"Yeah?" He paused. "No, Mother's _not_ here! Just found this guy and some stupid kid… Mm? Fine."

The phone shut and disappeared into the man's pockets. The man turned to look at Hope, and his stare turned suddenly predatory. Hope tensed.

Looking back, he never actually stood a chance.

The man's form blurred, and he materialized at Hope's shoulder, just behind him.

Hope felt the sharp three-pronged pain in his back and went down with a choked noise. The man picked him up like he weighed no more than a doll and kicked him into the wall.

"_Hope!" _Dajh screamed.

Into the benches and over them in a whirlwind of kicks and punches and pain, until he smacked into the flowerbed and lay there, too dizzy and nauseous and hurt to move.

He'd lost.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Dajh running towards him.

"No!" he half-shouted, half-coughed. But another figure entered his field of vision, and a black-gloved hand grabbed the front of his dress shirt and heaved him up. A silver-studded fist rose in his vision.

A clear, slightly glowing orb hit his attacker's head and bounced. He looked up, more in annoyance than any real hurt.

"Hm?"

Dajh stood next to Lightning's chest of materia, two more in his hands and a defiant expression on his face – one that slackened into wide-eyed fear as he stared at the man who had just turned his attention to him.

"Don't hurt him!" His voice trembled, and the stranger's fist loosened as his hungry stare came to rest on the materia.

"Just run!" Hope gasped.

His warning came too late.

.

.

.

"_Hey_, _Light? Rygdea was asking after you. Said they wanted to talk about something important. You know where to find them, right?"_

Lightning was tired of dealing with the Sanctum.

Cid's words still prodded at the back of her head, and her lip curled. Rebuild the Sanctum? Reconstruct the company that threatened the Planet and took away everything she ever cared about?

She would die a thousand flaming deaths before that ever happened.

The bitterness was tainted with a hint of sympathy. When she had seen him, he had been swathed in a pale cloak as opposed to his usual formal attire. But even the shapeless cloth couldn't entirely cover the unnatural bulges on his body – a spike jutting from his shoulder, the flash of hard crystal blue beneath his sleeve. So not even the famed former leader of the Sanctum had been spared from the epidemic.

Cid Raines did not have long to live.

Lightning's upper arm burned a little more fiercely in empathy, and she absently clutched the sleeve that covered it.

And Etro was still out there. They couldn't ever be rid of her, could they? Weak though her powers might be, she could still work her will through others.

Caius. Yeul.

Even Lightning, once upon a time. But no more.

The church was quiet from a distance. Even after the fall of Cocoon, it had been left mostly untouched. Rubble piled against its sides, and a support beam had punched a new hole in the roof, but the flowers were still fine.

After Serah had died, Lightning had ended up caring for them. They had never thrived as well with her as they had under Serah's hand.

She entered the church, and the first thing she saw was the tumbled and broken wooden church pews. The flagstones were cracked in some places, as if there had been a fight. She glanced at her campsite, and realized that the chest of materia wasn't there.

And then she saw the crumpled figure lying among the gutted field of flowers.

"_Hope!"_

Her feet moved without conscious thought, and she knelt beside the teenager and gathered him into her arms, propping his head and neck up against her shoulder. His face was so pale, white hair against a complexion made even more pallid than usual.

"Hope! Answer me! Are you okay?" She could feel her voice pitching with panic. She couldn't lose someone else. She _couldn't_.

To her eternal relief, he groaned, and his eyes cracked open. "Light," he whispered.

Her voice was tight, controlled and even. "Who did this?"

She would make the culprit _pay_.

He weakly shook his head. "Didn't… say." Then his eyes widened in sudden remembrance, and he jerked up suddenly, trying to get to his feet. "Dajh!" But he folded, falling back into Lightning's arms, head slumping in exhaustion.

"Dajh? Was he here, too?" But Hope's exclamation was all she needed to know.

They needed to find him, but she had to get Hope back to the clinic first; he needed medical treatment right away –

_And so do you._

Her arm burned, and her vision blurred.

Crystal stigma. _Not now. _

She could see the sickly dark gray fluid welling up on her shoulder beneath the crystal fragments that studded her skin, dripping over her hand onto the bright, bright green grass that seemed to be all that she could register at the moment.

The world went horizontal, and Lightning blacked out.

.

.

.

"Lucky thing I went after you, wasn't it?"

Fang leaned against another crystalline tree at the edge of the Forgotten City, expression studiously blank. Lightning regarded her emotionlessly.

"I told you I couldn't do it."

The others had trusted her to find Dajh and the kids in the Forgotten City and bring them back safely. Instead, she'd found a forest of child soldiers with inhuman green eyes and the Remnants of Etro. When she'd tried to fight, crystal stigma had intervened, and the black-suited men had overpowered her.

If it wasn't for Fang, she'd wouldn't be here right now.

Fang cocked her head. "Doesn't sound like the soldier I know. Sazh told you he didn't blame you _or_ Hope for what happened to Dajh. So what's up with the face?"

"No reason."

In a single fluid movement, Fang pushed herself from the tree and crossed the distance between them, her stride deceptively casual. She seized Lightning's right arm, and before the woman could furiously yank it from her grasp, Fang's fingers found her shoulder.

The sleeve she wore covered the blotches, but the hard material beneath the cloth and Lightning's involuntary wince of pain spoke volumes.

"Crystal stigma." Fang said it without a shred of doubt in her voice. "When exactly were you planning on telling us?"

She backed up suddenly and threw up her hands, anger twisting her face. "Right. When you dropped dead like half of Edge already, I suppose."

Lightning put down her Ultima Weapon and leveled a dark glare at Fang. "I hardly saved anyone before. We only killed Caius _after_ Cocoon destroyed all of Eden, and so many people died. What can I do now? You saw what happened with Kadaj and his cronies." She paused, and then added with a note of bitterness, "And there's no cure."

The punch whipped Lightning's face back and to one side.

Fang shook her knuckles out, vindictive satisfaction on her face. "Haven't I wanted to do _that _for a while."

"Fang_, _the hell–!"

"That's my line, thanks. So you're just gonna lay down and die then, are you? Look here, Sunshine. I'll be the first to say that we've got plenty of bodies between us. But from the way you act, you'd think they were hanging onto our ankles rather than freed to the Lifestream."

Fang jerked a thumb at her chest. "Snow was my friend, too. I knew Serah, same as you. And guess what – I get it! The world's worse for their absence. Does that mean you give up? Not on my watch, you don't."

Hope had said much the same thing after they both woke up. He and Sazh and Vanille had urged her to go after the kids that the Remnants had taken. They still believed in her even though Lightning couldn't see past her own mistakes.

Snow and Serah. She couldn't save them, had been able to do nothing more than hold them in their final moments and pray that it was all just a horrible dream.

_Dilly dally, shilly shally._ _Isn't it time you forgave yourself?_

The words came out without conscious thought. "So have you ever thought about redemption?"

Fang shrugged, but Lightning thought she saw the gleam of approval in the other woman's dark eyes. "Vanille's all for it, you might've heard. But me? Never tried."

"What? Not even once?"

She sheathed her sword and stood, starting for the trees where she knew her motorbike Odin waited. "Then I will. I'll call and tell you how it goes."

She would never forget the past, but she didn't have to let it weigh on her anymore. Lightning had other people to fight for now.

One step at a time. Sooner or later, she'd get where everyone else wanted her to go.

"But before you leave," Fang called after her, "I heard something pretty _interesting _on my way here."

The corner of the woman's mouth quirked. "Rumor is, our old friend Cid's got Etro's head."

.

.

.

Chaos Bahamut climbed high into the skies above Eden, readying one final assault: an orb of crackling black energy that would wreck the entire city should it impact.

Lightning wouldn't let that happen.

She jumped from the communications tower to intercept the eidolon, and her sword sliced across its snout in a spray of sparks. Bahamut roared, and its tail whipped towards her even as it flapped its wings to gain more height. Lightning blocked and exchanged a few more blows, but the force still sent her plummeting back towards the ground, too far behind to recover.

But she wasn't on her own.

"Lightning!"

Fang stood on an iron bridge twenty feet below, her lance across the back of her shoulders. "This better be the last time anyone steals my eidolith, you hear?"

The woman spun the spear above her head once, twice, and then whipped it around just in time to catch Lightning's fall. Her feet hit the weapon's shaft, and knees bent to absorb the impact.

"Give 'em hell!" Fang shouted, and with a grunt of exertion forced it upwards, sending Lightning shooting skyward like a wayward cannonball. Lightning closed the gap, but her sword scraped the end of Bahamut's tail as it once again rose beyond her reach.

But Lightning recognized the next figure, knelt on a beam thirty feet above her. Vanille jauntily waved her Binding Rod before she leaped out to intercept the older woman, magic crackling at her fingertips. "You can do it!"

As Lightning passed her, Vanille propelled her upward with a blast of Aero magic even as the backlash sent the magician falling far below.

Bahamut slowed to a hover high above the city, the orb of Chaos still charging within its gaping maw. If that hit the city, no one would survive.

"Go for it, Soldier Girl!" Sazh, guns now holstered, jumped into empty space, catching her foot as Lightning flew past and heaving for all he was worth.

Noel was suddenly there, seemingly motionless in the sky above her. "Better not disappoint!" he shouted over the wind even as he spun in midair to avoid Lightning's path. The sole of his boot connected with hers just as he pushed off, propelling Lightning ever higher.

There was still one more person standing on the highest point of the skyscraper before the buildings of Eden gave way to open sky. Like the others, Hope leaped from his perch to take her hand, time briefly seeming to slow as they both hung midair.

"Don't give up now."

And then the hand holding hers glowed blue with magically imbued strength as he flung her skyward.

_But you've never given up on me, have you_?

Even after the crystal stigma, after losing her memories and piecing them back together with Hope at her side. After they fought together against Caius in the Northern Crater and survived Cocoonfall.

She wouldn't fail any more friends.

Her initial aura deepened into a wave of crimson that crackled around her like a live bomb. Still, beyond the roaring in her ears and the film of red that covered her vision, Lightning saw the sea of blue.

Bahamut had finished charging its attack.

The dragon roared and released the mass of energy in a sphere that easily spanned the entire square in diameter. Lightning braced herself as red and blue collided.

It was like swimming against the ocean current in a typhoon. Like being choked from all sides, like paddling through quicksand. It was an insurmountable pressure that seemed to split around her as she forced her way through. Red and blue and roiling purple and then –

White.

Lightning's eyes widened in shock as another girl approached her, gliding down from above. Blue eyes and pink hair mirrored Lightning's own features, yet the other's kind, open smile set her so apart.

Both of her warm hands wrapped tightly around Lightning's, and where they touched, tendrils of green light infused Lightning's arm, giving her new strength. Serah laughed softly, her achingly familiar voice echoing in Lightning's ears like a whisper.

"_Are you ready?"_

Then there was no more blue, and Bahamut instead loomed above her, roaring its fury into the skies. Lightning flipped in midair. Her blade met the top of its head and dug down into a chink in the armor, dragging a wound that gleamed with scarlet flame behind her as she ran down its back.

Now they were both in free fall, fire engulfing the roaring dragon from the rent her Ultima Weapon had carved in its armor.

Lightning twisted, felt the materia activate and the gravity field engulf her just as she touched the ground. Bahamut crashed into the square, obliterating what little was left of the sculpture in its center. Cloud after cloud of dust engulfed its surroundings as it writhed before it abruptly stilled. The familiar purple light glowed around it as the dragon melted into nothing, returning to the Lifestream.

She heard her friends cheering. Vanille waved her hands over her head to get her attention, pausing to high five an enthusiastic Noel. Sazh settled for a hand in the air to preserve dignity, and Fang cocked her head and nodded at her. Hope just caught her eye and smiled, boomerang already tucked away.

They could celebrate their victory, but she could still feel the undercurrent of tension throughout the area. They all knew it.

Bahamut might have been dead, but it wasn't over.

The Remnants were still out there. Caius. Etro's head, supposedly the last of the alien species that sought to take over the world with Caius as her instrument of destruction.

Even as the last thought crossed her mind, her vision zeroed in on the dark-haired, bandaged figure falling from twelve stories up. On the purple-haired man who followed him down, and the speck of a black object in between them.

Found them.

.

.

.

The water fountained into the air from where Kadaj had broken the floor of the church, falling in rivulets and splashing everywhere as a spring welled up from the remnants of Serah's destroyed blooms.

Kadaj shouted in shock and scrambled for his bike, wheeling up over the wall and out of sight. Lightning hardly noticed. She had eyes only for the water that fell on her exposed arm, on the growths of cold blue crystal that clung to gray skin.

Where the rain fell, the crystals crumbled. Flecks of clear blue fell from her arm, and the diseased area glowed pale green like the light of a Cure materia, the ashen shades fading like they had never been there to begin with.

The constant ache that she had grown accustomed to, gone. Everywhere in Edge, people would be standing in the rain, marveling as the stigma disappeared from their bodies.

It was Serah, calling on the power of the Planet from the Lifestream. It had to be.

Lightning's words drifted into empty air. "Thank you."

"_No problem!" Serah told her cheerfully, bandaging a gash that the party's Cure materia hadn't quite been able to heal. She tied the knot on the cloth binding and skipped back a step, smiling. "I know I'm no good at anything other than healing spells, but..." _

_ Serah held up a finger to forestall Lightning's corrective reply, and her smile changed to one slightly sadder. _

_ "Just… if you ever need help, you can tell me, Sis. Maybe – maybe I can be your hero this time."_

Serah had known something was wrong, from the moment she saw her sister again after nearly five years of separation.

Oh, she had asked. She had thrown her arms desperately around Lightning and demanded to know where she had been, what had happened to her and _Snow_.

Lightning had pushed her away. That was Serah's first warning.

The second was when she realized that Lightning didn't remember who Snow was.

She hadn't said anything, because at that point she was questioning whether this rose-haired stranger was truly her older sister.

Things happened too quickly. At first their task had just been to destroy the mako reactors around Eden. Kill the generators, and halt the destruction of the Planet. But then the Sector Seven Plate dropped and Serah was captured. Caius escaped with Etro and suddenly AVALANCHE was chasing him across the Planet on a quest for revenge that turned into a mission to save everyone.

Caius wanted to take over the Planet by taking control of Valhalla, the land beyond time. The Unseen Realm, the origin of the Lifestream. But the only way he could do that was by damaging the Planet enough so that the Lifestream would emerge to heal it, opening the path to Valhalla and the Cetra's throne.

And it had all started with Yeul.

.

.

.

"Noel!"

"Yeul?" Noel spun around just in time for Yeul to reach him and throw her arms around his neck.

"You're finally back!"

He laughed and patted her back. "Yeah, just regular monster patrol. What's the rush?"

"Nothing much," she smiled. "It's just nice to have you here."

"Glad to _be_ here, then."

He backed off from her embrace to glance over her shoulder. "So… where's Caius gone to?"

"He's not far. He had to attend a conference with the President, so I had some free time."

"And that, right there, is as rare as a natural materia. So let's celebrate! What _do _you want to do?" Noel made a show of looking around. "Sanctum headquarters starts looking all the same after a year or two."

She giggled. "It's not so bad."

"True, but you've hardly been outside it, right?" Noel grinned as an idea came to him. "Hey, hey. What do you say to a walk above Plate?"

Yeul shook her head, but she looked uncertain. "We both know I'm not allowed to. It's dangerous for my health."

"No way! The air up here isn't any better than what we've got down there. There are parks, and playgrounds, and stores – it'll be fun, promise!"

Noel pulled his best puppy dog expression.

"Yeul, _pleaaase?_"

He could see Yeul battling with herself – she had always been more rule-conscious – but after a moment, she folded.

"Just for an hour or two," she stipulated. Noel pumped his fist in the air.

"This is gonna be great!"

It _was _great, and way easier than Noel had expected.

Yeul tucked her waterfall of hair beneath her headdress and found a jacket to wear over her thin dress – it got chilly down there, and Noel wasn't going to let her catch a cold – and the duo passed security and got onto the train without incident.

The very first place Noel showed her around was the Nautilus Amusement Park, where they caught the back end of a _Loveless_ showing and went for a ride or two in the chocobo pen. Afterwards was the school, and Yeul looked on a little wistfully as Noel described the classes and what people did there other than study.

"Did you go here?" she asked him, and Noel rubbed his chin sheepishly.

"Nah," he admitted. "I was homeschooled where I came from. Paddra," he added when Yeul tilted her head. "It's a village in the Pulsian Mountains. Pretty much has a mako reactor and…"

"– Absolutely _nothing else_,_" _Yeul finished, and they had a good laugh.

They hung around the nearby elementary school for a while longer – at one point Yeul struck up a conversation with a silver-haired student – and then spent a while walking around the stores, where Noel pointed out the different types of shops and promised to buy her whatever she wanted – though the only thing she ended up purchasing was a cheap leather bracelet strung with a few colorful tribal beads.

"It reminds me of you and Caius!" she told him excitedly, pointing to the three stones knotted onto the leather ends – silver, blue and purple. Noel felt his cheeks warm and turned away a little hurriedly to scratch the back of his head.

"Ah… thanks."

The first bump came when Yeul asked him about the slums.

"You want to go down below Plate?"

She nodded.

"To the _slums_?"

She nodded again.

"Yeul, Caius would have my head if I took you down there. It's dangerous and there are monsters, and… heck, he's already gonna castrate me for this entire outing." Noel rubbed the back of his neck, wincing at the imagery. "I mean, there are lots of museums we haven't visited yet."

"Mhm."

"You haven't even seen Euride Gorge, right? Or gone to the pet shops downtown!"

His attempt to distract her failed. "Noel, please?"

Now _Yeul_ was the one looking up at him beseechingly, hands clasped before her and pleading expression turned on full force. Noel cursed his friend's ability to turn him into a pile of submissive goop.

"… Fine. But stay close to me, okay?"

Before they knew it, it had been much longer than an hour or two, and Yeul finally dragged Noel back onto the last train bound for Sanctum Headquarters as the sun set on Eden.

"Ooh, Caius is going to flip…" Noel glanced guiltily at Yeul. "Sorry about forgetting."

"It's okay. I had a lot of fun today. Caius will understand," Yeul told him firmly.

"Don't know about that. I mean, he's cool when he's not scowling and being antisocial, but that's pretty much all the time."

Yeul kicked her feet a little against the subway floor. "Caius just… doesn't have very much to be happy about. He has had to worry about me all the time, for a very long time."

"So, like, sixteen years or so? Ever since you were born?"

Her eyes darkened. "Longer."

Before Noel could ask her what she meant, the train slowed to a stop. Yeul pulled Noel outside the train doors, holding his hand for a moment longer than necessary as the sliding doors closed and the train pulled away from the station. They walked the short distance to the doors of Sanctum Headquarters, where Yeul skipped a few steps in front of him and spun around to smile gently back at him. "Thank you for today, Noel."

"No problem." He grinned back, but something in her expression turned it into a frown. "Hey, you okay?"

"For now."

"What's that supposed to mean?" he tried to joke, but it came out flat. He was getting worried, by Yeul's odd behavior and the growing tension he could feel in the atmosphere.

"Nothing much." Any signs of cheer completely gone now, Yeul clasped her hands in front of her. "This was the first time I had ever seen the city, you know." Melancholy tinged her voice.  
"Wait, _really_? Why didn't you ever go before?" He had known that she rarely went outside, but hadn't thought it was to that degree. Noel was getting more and more freaked out, and he had no idea where Yeul was going with this.

His friend paused. "The scientists said that it makes it progress faster." She shook her head quickly as Noel opened his mouth to protest. "But don't blame yourself. The end was always meant to be today, no matter what happened. I just wanted you to know one thing."

Yeul smiled, happy and heartbroken at the same time. "It was the best last day I could ever have asked for."

Noel hesitantly stepped towards her. "… Yeul?"

She abruptly swayed, and Noel's heart seized in his throat as her eyes closed and she collapsed, falling forward like a puppet with its strings cut. He was moving before his mind could process the situation, catching her as she fell and sinking to the floor with her in his arms. "Yeul, what's wrong? No, no, no–"

She wasn't moving, and she wasn't breathing. Noel quickly checked her limp wrist and nearly froze as he registered the lack of a pulse.

No pulse. No heartbeat.

"Yeul!"

The familiar rich resonance came from the doors, and Noel looked up to see Caius accompanied by a veritable regiment of guards walking swiftly towards them. As the guardian's eyes swept over him and Yeul's motionless body (_not _corpse, Noel wouldn't believe it), his dark eyes didn't register sadness.

They were bitter. Angry. Regretful.

Like he had expected this to happen.

Caius lifted her gently out of Noel's arms and turned to bring her back into Headquarters, and Noel just knelt frozen, watching them go. Until the door swung shut behind the last soldier and the few nearby guards dispersed.

Until his mind finally accepted the horrible truth. That somehow, Yeul was dead.

_It… it was the best last day I could ever have asked for._

She was dead, and she had known it was going to happen. And so had Caius.

It wasn't until much later that he found out the rest. About Yeul, and about Caius, and about Noel.

The scientists wanted to create a superhuman by recombining human DNA and the genes of Etro. Yeul was their product – a girl who, while fragile, had incredible materia aptitude and the gift of premonition.

But she wasn't the success they thought she was. As a result of the method of her creation, Yeul was afflicted with the same illness that befell the monstrous clones: degradation, which caused advanced aging and premature death.

The first Yeul died at the physical age of sixteen, two years after she opened her eyes for the first time.

The scientists tried again.

No Yeul lived longer than five years, and many lived hardly at all, dying in early childhood or infancy.

Noel's Yeul lasted the longest. For Caius, her death was the final straw.

Five days after she died, he raided Research and Development and destroyed all their records, wrecked their labs and released their experiments. He attacked Headquarters and killed Primarch Barthandelus before vanishing like smoke along with the alien Etro.

No more Etro, no more experimentation with her cells. No more Yeuls.

"The Sanctum is a poison," Caius told Noel at the top of Sanctum Headquarters, against the backdrop of scorching flames and the dead Primarch. "I will embrace my birth and wrest control from those who believe the lives of others are theirs to toy with as they please."

Caius, son of Etro and strengthened by the powers of the Heart of Chaos.

He turned, and a single dark, batlike wing swept from his back, black sparks scattering in its wake. "I will cleanse the Planet of the unworthy, starting here."

When Noel blinked again, he was gone.

Two months later, the Purge happened.

.

.

.

In order to resurrect Yeul, Caius would have summoned Cocoon.

It was a planet, or so the legends said. A giant moon that once hovered high in the sky, a living weapon created by Lindzei to destroy Pulse at the end of days.

Caius was going to crash it into Gran Pulse, and end millions and millions of lives. The entrance to Valhalla would yawn open to accept the souls of the multitude deceased even as the Lifestream rushed forth to heal the scars in the Planet. Caius thought to take control of the Lifestream and use it to rework the planet in Etro's vision. Beyond that, he believed he could bring back Yeul healed and whole.

The moment when Etro's will eventually twisted Caius's own intentions was unclear.

At any rate, only the beast Ragnarok could stop Cocoonfall, and only a Cetra, a member of an ancient Pulsian tribe long gone, could summon it using the White Materia.

Vanille was the last Cetra who possessed the power. And if Serah hadn't pushed her out of the way when Caius attacked, she would have died.

"_Vanille, behind you!"_

_ "What-?"_

_ "Serah!"_

_ "SERAH!" _

Instead, it was _her_.

Vanille was on the ground, eyes wide and clothes splattered with her best friend's blood. Serah slumped, head falling forward even as Caius pulled his blade free and Noel cradled her in his arms. The Ragnarok materia, forgotten, rolled off the edge and into the abyss.

No wonder Vanille couldn't look Lightning in the eye. No wonder she still felt that she had to atone, regardless of how many times they all had told her that it wasn't her fault.

Vanille thought she should have been the one to die in Serah's place. Lightning thought should have been _her_, who had nearly killed both of them under Etro's influence.

But none of it had changed the fact that in the end, Ragnarok had been too late to completely stop Cocoonfall. Eden was destroyed in the clash between the two, until the Lifestream rose to aid in its destruction, absorbing the impact and scattered debris.

Pulse hadn't been destroyed, but the survivors felt the loss all the more sharply for it.

They had won, but so, so many people died.

In that light, it didn't feel like much of a victory.

.

.

.

Snow joined PSICOM to make a difference.

"This world needs heroes," he said, his fists knuckled together and confident grin ever on his face. "I'll protect everyone, and preserve my honor as a soldier!"

Lightning just scoffed at him. He had always been full of hot air, and when Serah had shown up on her doorstep with _him _arm-in-arm, the first thing she had done was punch him clear off the porch.

She couldn't stand him. Snow was the infuriatingly naïve idiot who simply didn't understand that all his talk of being a hero was just that – talk. He didn't think before he acted, had the gall to call her _Sis, _and put everyone else on the team in danger with his stupid antics.

If claiming heroism were a crime, Snow would be on death row.

His little delinquent gangof lawbreakers did not impress her. NORA – No Obligations, Rules or Authority.

Or No Respect for Authority. It was all the same to her.

She had run monster-hunting patrols for the Guardian Corps, and he went into civilian defense with PSICOM. The two were assigned to missions together, sometimes. He even tried to cajole her into transferring, and she flatly refused. Lightning still saw more of Snow than she'd like, considering he was Serah's boyfriend.

That was all he'd ever be, she thought, if she had something to say about it. Snow had other ideas.

"My dream? I grew up an orphan, never knew my parents. So, after all's said and done, I want to go home, have a family of my own."

That dream died when Bodhum burned. Caius, star SOLDIER of the Sanctum, razed everything into piles of twisted rubble and dry soot. Lightning's parents were dead. All of NORA – Snow's old gang – was gone. She and Snow were left to struggle through the wreckage in Caius's wake, battling rage and misery, towards the mansion up on the mountain. They were the ones who worked together to defeat him and throw his remains into the depths of the Reactor.

Neither of them was enhanced, not like the monsters and soldiers that the scientists at the Gapra Whitewood turned out. They shouldn't have stood a chance against someone like Caius.

Against all odds, they defeated him, but sustained near-fatal injuries in the process. That was how Professor Hojo found them, and that was why he took them both in for experimentation.

They survived the destruction of their hometown, only to be thrust into a different kind of hell.

The scientists called it Project L. The two had had different enhancements – or rather, Lightning's had been more extensive than Snow's. Etro's cells as well as mako. Crystals in her blood that gleamed blue through soulless eyes. That was why when Snow broke them both out four years later, Lightning was comatose and Snow had had to drag her nearly the entire way back to Eden, all the while staying under the radar of the Sanctum's search for the escaped experimental subjects.

It was mere miles from Eden when he'd met his match.

"_Boy, oh boy... The price of freedom sure is steep."_

Snow had been the hero he wanted to become. But he had only managed to protect one person, and in the end, it had cost him his life.

Too stubborn to die, huh? What a stupid joke.

She remembered all that and more now as she knelt among the blank whiteness of the Lifestream, sword driven into the ground before her and the familiar figure at her back. The top of her head still barely hit his shoulder.

She'd been fighting the resurrected Caius only moments before. Or she had already lost, knelt on the ground and run repeatedly through. Where was she now?

Dead? No, that wasn't right.

"Come on, Sis! You've defeated Caius twice before, haven't you? This'll be a cakewalk."

"I'm not your sister," she murmured without any bite.

"Well, aside from that." He smashed his fists together. "Embrace your dreams, and preserve your honor. Dreams and honor – that's what you need to be a SOLDIER!"

She almost scoffed, and Snow, insensitive idiot that he was, still seemed to pick it up. He grinned sheepishly. "Okay, I get it. You never cared about SOLDIER _or_ PSICOM. But, what I'm trying to say, is that…" He pounded a fist against his chest. "It's what in here that counts!"

"So what if it looks hopeless? A _real_ hero would never give up." She felt him turn his head and give her an inquisitive look.

"Need a hand, Sis?"

With an enormous effort, Lightning rose to her feet, and snorted, "Like I'd let you take all the glory."

She heard him laugh once before the blankness cleared and Caius was there again, rushing at her from the skies above. She swung her sword, and the clash jarred the ruined buildings they fought on.

For once, Snow was right.

She had come too far to let this stop her now.

The next few minutes were a blur of action and lightning-fast flashes, blocks and counterstrikes. No matter where she turned, Caius was always there, blocking her sword with a sweep of his own and forcing her back.

His form was perfect, his stance a steel wall. There were no holes in his defense, but Lightning could always create her own.

She summoned a strong Thunder spell to her fingertips, flinging it in crackling bolts of energy. Caius lifted his sword to slice them apart in succession, black energy following in its wake.

Lightning was already there, blade flashing. Caius blocked her, but barely, taking a step back to regain his equilibrium. She didn't let him.

It was the final, desperate lunge that sealed it, her blade piercing his armor in one of the few spots weakened by their relentless battering. She could see his jaw slackening, his weapon tip falling ever-so-slightly –

Caius took a step back into empty air, and fell, eyes flicking to Lightning's for a split second. She met it evenly, sword lowered at her side.

She didn't need to fight anymore.

"Go back to where you came from," she told the falling figure, even as Caius's batlike wing rose and lengthened, wrapping around him in a momentary embrace before splitting apart into nothing. His reply rose back up to her like the dregs of a malicious echo, already dissipating into thin air.

_I… I will never be a memory_.

It was over.

.

.

.

Her friends stood in front of the church pews. Noel and Vanille, laughing and cheering as the children swarmed into the healing springs. Fang, arms crossed over her sari as she muttered something to a grinning Sazh before shoving him, clothes and all, into the water. His attempt to pull the warrior after him failed, but Noel tackled her in from behind while Vanille shrieked in laughter and jumped after them.

Only Hope was still on dry ground, keeping well back from the water's edge to avoid the grasping hands as he shot her an amused glance. Lightning glanced around a little self-consciously, seeing how she must look. Soaking wet, conspicuously out of place in a crowd of splashing children.

She didn't mind. What stayed with her was the fact that they were all here. Together.

Lightning hadn't known how suffocating the knot in her chest was until it loosened, seemed to disappear like mist into air.

Her eyes widened as she saw two more figures beyond the group of children crouched near the entrance. A tall man in a trench coat leaned against the doorframe, and a young woman in a pleated skirt and white vest knelt beside a tiny patch of flowers.

Serah rose, and her blue, blue eyes turned to meet Lightning's. Her lips curved up in a gentle smile.

"_Lightning," _she whispered. _"I'll miss you." _Lightning couldn't tear her eyes away.

"_But everything's all right now, isn't it?"_

She turned to leave and Snow did as well, running ahead of her until they both disappeared into the blinding white sunbeams outside the church entrance. Hope finally stumbled, and Noel caught him by the ankle and threw him into the water, laughing uproariously as the teen sputtered to the surface, face dripping.

"… I guess so," Lightning told the open air.

"I'm not alone anymore."

_Fin. _

**A/N: I cringed multiple times at Advent Children's shameless defiance of physics while writing this. Taking the class makes it worse. **

**When I first got this idea, Hope and Vanille were supposed to be Zack and Aerith, though tweaked quite a bit. Mostly based on Vanille's "saint" image in LR. I think it fits better this way, heh. **

**This was originally just supposed to be the Chaos Bahamut part, but then I couldn't resist writing other bits and pieces, then Yeul and Noel and Caius demanded a bigger role, and then... it exploded. I still haven't done everything I want to with it, but whatever. Maybe I'll make additional edits. **

**Hope you enjoyed, cheers!**


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